Breathing
by Cugami
Summary: RWDM. Ron can't sleep as the war with Voldemort takes more lives. Draco wordlessly helps him through.


_Disclaimers:_ Potterverse belong to JK Rowling. 

_Note_: Hear me bang my head against the table on the space right next to the book that says Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics. But yes, I'm on chapter 3 of the 7 chapters that I have to understand tonight. Not bad but not good either. And I can't study anymore. I now vent, get rid of the stuff in my head and happily go back to filling it with equations right after this.

This is a vignette to **Borrowed Heaven**, more or less. Sometimes, I'm just one big sap.

**Breathing**We've gone past yelling. Especially after being unceremoniously thrown out of the library for disturbing the think tank's sleep, there hardly is a choice in the matter of pursuing the verbal attacks. Besides, I do prefer sleeping in a mattress instead of the hallway, even if I have to share with three other houses inside the library of all places. Many thanks to Dumbledore for turning one corner of the library floor into a mattress for twenty. The others are sleeping soundly if the snores are of any indication.

Given any day, I will laugh out loud at this scene but now, I can't. Not with the thought of how the Gryffindor tower crumbled or how the Slytherin dungeon is currently reeking with a poisonous gas. The Ravenclaw tower is full of pikes and ugly memories of the last attack. The Hufflepuff's is still a safe place but no one wants to sleep in a room so close to where the Great Hall is – now a training ground where hexes and explosions are a daily and nightly event.

lj-cut  
But, I digress

Think tank, a term a Ravenclaw came up with after reading through some muggle books. What we are. We don't have to fight. We have to think.

But, sometimes you think too deep, dream so much, and lose yourself in the reality you created in the vast expanse of your mind. Then you find yourself alone in it, strangely satisfied that no one can probe the weakness which you hope to hide and conquer someday. Everyone has it, this terror that manifests physically into fear.

The little worries crawl your mind like light-footed spiders threading on shadowed corners, weaving their webs efficiently and noiselessly. With barely a pause for breath, the cobwebs take form and wait in silence for the careless prey.

I fear the day that I am trapped in these webs, immobile while I lay in wait for the end. We lose more every day. Each wrong decision I make is one more life to burden my conscience.

I clutch on the knight tightly, hearing it whimper in my palms and I can feel it futilely poke my skin with its jousting stick. How much more can be sacrificed, I wonder.

He watches me. He tries to read my next move while I try to read his. We play this game every night while everyone took their refuge in the small respite of sleep. I can't sleep and he stays awake to annoy me, he says. I want everyone asleep because I can't hear myself think when people around me keep talking and throwing their own views aloud.

The observant prat sneers that I'm too easy. He insists that my mind is so easily distracted, unbecoming of a strategist. I place my knight to take his taunting bishop and I watch him shake his head as he kills my knight with his rook. I push my queen, straight for his king and he bites my bait with his white knight, cutting off her head. Finally, I tip his king over with the last pawn my lady's sacrifice made possible and look up to see the gray eyes staring back. He concedes the checkmate without a word.

Despite my win, I feel ill at ease. I had lost many. The broken figures begin to pull themselves together, reconnecting dislocated arms, heads and legs in their proper places. I watch it mutely and wait until everything's back in order before I drop them inside the pouch.

I have so little to be proud of and chess is the one and only thing I have confidence in. But, not lately and it shows. And he knows with each passing night yet he says nothing. Instead, he stays awake and challenges me every time he finds me awake.

If only.

If I can get over this fear, perhaps I can recover my lost confidence.

I can see the grounds from where I sit and watch as the leaves rustle but I cannot feel the wind nor hear anything. The windows are closed for everyone's safety. All means of exit or entrance in the castle are closed, locked and warded.

I flinch as I feel silk strands graze my chin. For a moment, I envision spiders spinning me slowly into a cocoon. When I look down, I relax. It still takes some getting used to, breathing the same air and living in each other's space. He annoys me, that's true. He interrupts my thoughts every night.

I poke his ear and hear him snort in his sleep, burying deeper under my chin. I can hear something else other than the scuttling spiders.

I close my eyes and listen to him breathe.

_- finis_


End file.
